A few days back, in the evening, we booked a Prime SUV on Ola for the next day at 7 am. Ola app promised it to be a “Spacious 6-seater SUV”.
The next day, when the time of the ride arrived, we were assigned a vehicle. On calling up the driver, we realized that he had a 4-seater sedan. On asking him that we wanted a 6-seater SUV he asked us to cancel the ride and book another. So much about Ola’s promise of “moving people, and the world”, albeit with a pinch of unreliability and lack of concern for customers.
We finally had to book Uber XL and move ahead. Such random, abrupt, and customer-unfriendly actions by Ola are not unusual. If you are one of the thousands of other riders like me who have experienced the services of Uber and Ola would agree that Uber experience is comparatively much better than Ola. Yes, I agree, even Uber is also not perfect, but in comparison, Uber is much better than Ola on many counts.
Uber’s interface is sleek. Ola interface is like a complex jungle. You can easily get lost and make a mistake. The quality of vehicles and drivers on Uber are comparatively better. Most of the Ola drivers are rude, unprofessional, and unconcerned. The vehicles are generally of third-class quality, unclean, poorly maintained and nearing their allowed lifespan. Ola is an example of our mindset of copying the best but ending up worse.
Coming to Uber, even their Indian services are also not as good as other places. That is because of the Indian Jugaadu mindset of our drivers and their vehicle owners that makes our experiences not-so-pleasant. This mindset aspires to earn the maximum by giving the minimum of service and quality.
But such greed is giving disrepute to our country. We are labelled as a country with mediocre quality standards. It hurts the brand India.
Because of such a poor-quality mindset, we copy Amazon, known for its best customer service worldwide, and end up becoming its sub-standard cousin Flipkart.
We try to imitate the Airbnb of the world and end up becoming its Desi sub-standard version, Oyo.
We copy the best, but then end up becoming only an inferior, watered-down, worse version of that best.
Until we put our act together, we will not be able to build strong, reliable brands that can be trusted for excellent quality and reliable service. We might win market share till investor money is flowing in to allow unreasonable discounts, but we will suffer badly when the funds dry up.
The path to long-term business success is only through the best quality of products, services and customer experience. With Jugaad, we may get away for a while, but in the end, we will get stuck up in the nowhere land.
We need to change our mindset. We must aspire to become better than the best, not worse.
Don’t aspire to be Uber and then become Ola. Aspire to be better than Uber.
#Mindset #BuildYourBusiness #Business #Growth #Brand